Citizens must remember value of public notices
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 1:59 pm By FRANK GIBSON Editor's note: it's Public Notice Week Jan. 18-24--time to remind citizens of the value of Public Notices in representative democratic government. When governments create or authorize state and local agencies to create new programs, they typically require some measure of public disclosure as a form of public oversight and to make agencies accountable.
The concept eventually extended to commerce as a way to protect property interest, provide due process and consumer protection from certain business entities - foreclosures, bankruptcies or unclaimed property, to name a few. City councils, county commissions, school boards and other public bodies are required to provide special notices of special meetings, for example, because those notices must list all items to be discussed. Public notices are required for public hearings on land zoning changes, proposed budgets and taxes, certain ordinances, annexations, and when the government plans to use its ultimate police power - the use of eminent domain to take private property. Proposals have been made in Tennessee and other states to move those disclosure notices solely to government websites. That would be tantamount to eliminating public notices as they have historically been. As one commentator in Georgia noted on a similar county commissioners' association proposal: "That would take notices out of plain sight and bury them in the tangle of documents on government-designated websites." Anyone looking for a public notice would have to know exactly what they are searching for and when and where to look. Instead of going to their local newspaper where they have always gone to see notices, citizens would be left searching for "a needle in a haystack." Public notices need to be made available as widely as possible. Tennessee newspapers and the General Assembly smartly went in that direction last year. To ensure the notices are easily found, newspapers must link to the notices section from the website homepage. From there they link to the statewide website at www.tnpublicnotices.com. The site is searchable. The only way to make distribution any wider would require stuffing notices in every mailbox. The touted savings never include the costs of maintaining a dependable and secure government website, one that can't be hacked and where there are no guarantees. The latest available figures showed that 45% of Tennessee households subscribe to newspapers. That's a base. When newspaper website traffic is added, it is easy to see that many readers migrating from print are migrating to newspaper-run websites. Now they will find notices in both places, plus 1. No one has said it better than the Valdosta (GA) Daily Times: "Newspapers have a long and important legacy of helping the public keep an eye on officeholders and agencies through our news reporting and publication of government notices." Enough said. Frank Gibson is public policy director for the Tennessee Press Association. He can be reached at fgibson@tnpress.com.
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